Threats Facing Citizen Journalists

Even with all the foment of new media channels and multiplying sources of information, there are profound threats from having fewer journalists on the beat. We tend to think of some relatively recent journalistic work like Watergate, the Clinton Impeachment, NSA Wiretapping, and others. Wikipedia has even assembled a complete list of U.S. federal political scandals dating back to the 1700s.

A few things closer to home actually pose considerable concern. For example, GreenTech Automotive filed an $85 million lawsuit against the Franklin Center for our reporting. This suit was tossed out of court, but it is the type of thing that poses a considerable threat to fledgling news organizations and citizen journalists who do not have the resources or skill sets to defend themselves while continuing to report the facts as they see them.

Here are just a few of the threats and concerns that readily come to mind:

Libel Suits. These suits can be used by organizations and governments to shut down reporting, including any financial support. How does a citizen journalist or small organization defend itself in these situations?

Access Issues. There is a growing challenge of gaining access as a journalist if you do not have a business card from a major news outlet. How does a small organization or citizen journalist challenge a refusal to allow access?

Protecting Sources. You may have seen our work about media shield laws. How does a citizen journalist or small organization find the legal talent to help them battle court or government directed efforts to identify confidential sources?

Freedom of Information Requests. These can be blocked, delayed, or redacted to the point of obfuscation. How does a small organization develop the skill set and stamina to pursue this vital method of gathering information?

Reporting Limitations

In addition to threats there are limitations to news reporting that happen as a result of smaller organizations or even solo journalists reporting the news. These include:

Multiple Stories. It can come down to production capacity. How does a solo journalist or smaller organization cover multiple stories at any one time?

Big Data. More and more we are finding large news organizations sifting through big chunks of data to identify trends and develop insight into changes. How does a small organization find the skills and staff to accomplish this task?

Legislative Activity. While a small organization may be able to dig into one or two key stories, how does it keep on top of all that is of concern on its particular beat? For example, BillTrack50 provides mounds of data on legislation underway at the federal and state level. If your beat is California, how do you keep up with the more than 1,000 bills? Plus, state resources vary by how up-to-date and robust their website is with legislative information and more.

Fact Checking. How does the smaller organization dig deep to back up their facts and do so without breaking the bank or running out of time?FactCheck.org and Politifact.com are two resources, but there needs to be more.

Power of Brands. There is a real power of brands. For example, the New York Times generates a great deal of credibility and power in addition to bringing considerable resources to bear on reporting. For small organizations or citizen journalists it is BYOB—Build Your Own Brand.

Positive Trends

The good news is that for nearly every threat a growing capability is being developed on the Internet to assist journalists. But even so, a critical mass of resources and expertise are still required to defend lawsuits and pursue leads that elude the best of citizen journalists or the smaller news organizations.

Another promising trend is for larger news brands to pick up stories from the smaller outfits. This is particularly appropriate in statehouse or investigative reporting where the mainline news organizations have significantly cut back on their own coverage and capabilities.

How Can You Respond?

Those threats can be overcome by supporting the revolution in reporting across the breadth of new media that has been emerging over the past several decades. These include our own watchdog reporting that continues to grow – now in place in 36 states, and expanding its coverage within those states.

You can also support those organizations and issues that are near and dear to your own heart. For example, we have invested considerable energy and resources both publicizing and shaping the debate about a media shield law. John Fund at the National Review says, “What the Franklin Center is doing is the most exciting thing in journalism.”

On Monday the White House made a startling announcement: it was removing a federal regulation that made its Office of Administration subject to the Freedom of Information Act. This is the office that handles record-keeping duties for the White House, like e-mail archiving.

Sadly, such obfuscating tactics reflect a widely-accepted line of thought that assumes transparency isn’t helpful for reform and is actually part of the problem in our government. The change in policy appears intentionally timed in conjunction with the scandal erupting around Hillary Clinton’s email usage as Secretary of State. But there’s another national event taking place this week, and the White House’s move only goes to underscore its importance: Sunshine Week.

What is Sunshine Week?

Sunshine Week is an annual celebration that takes place among news outlets, activists, and community organizations across the country. It centers on access to public information (or lack thereof) and aims to show how important it is for you and your community.

Sunshine Week originated in Florida – the appropriately nicknamed “Sunshine State” – as “Sunshine Sunday” on James Madison’s birthday in 2002. The Florida press at the time was reacting to efforts by the state legislature to close information off to the public in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the controversial death of Dale Earnhardt, both in 2001. The idea caught on, and now includes a broad and deep coalition ranging from the Associated Press, to local papers like The Oklahoman, to high school students who live-tweeted an open records audit of their local government.

The aim of Sunshine Week – to shine the bright light of accountability on our government and those who serve in it – fits perfectly into the mission of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Over the past five years, this week of heightened attention on the importance of transparency has given the Franklin Center an opportunity to celebrate the work we do year round to fulfill the vision of our namesake, Benjamin Franklin, of bringing integrity to our public institutions.

What is the Franklin Center doing about it?

“We need to guard against this being a press-only event,” said Andrew Alexander, a former Washington Post ombudsman and award-winning journalist, at a Newseum panel celebrating the Freedom of Information Act.

He’s right. Sunshine Week can only work to the extent that citizens are engaged and informed. Last year, for example, our citizen journalism team performed audits of their city, township, and county websites. They found that in many cases, their local government was actually doing a good job of making public information easily accessible, but hurdles to filing open records requests often remained.

This year, the professional journalism team at Watchdog.org is taking the lead through a series of stories made possible by OpenTheBooks.com. Through the government spending website, they uncovered stories about how the federal Small Business Administration has been poorly tracking the default rate of its loans, giving loans to luxury goods retailers like Lamborghini and Rolex, and essentially gambling millions of taxpayer dollars behind a wall of state secrecy.

In addition to this, Watchdog.org reporters have been drawing attention to failures to achieve greater transparency, such as an utter absence of support for transparency-increasing bills by the congressional delegation from Alabama and Mississippi.

Even the contributors for Watchdog Arena, our citizen reporting arm of Watchdog.org, got in on the action, reporting that even though a recent bill allowing more fees to be charged for right to know requests was defeated in New Hampshire, local bureaucrats still make accessing documents as hard as humanly possible. And in New York, they found that Hillary Clinton isn’t the only politician with email troubles. Governor Andrew Cuomo has found himself in the middle of an email controversy after he instituted a policy of deleting emails after 90 days.

We still have work to do

Such stories, however, are only the tip of the iceberg. Penetrating the dense government bureaucracy to make sense of what goes on behind the scenes is still notoriously hard. Current laws make it virtually impossible for government employees to go on the record, which is just one facet of the many-sided challenge of watchdog journalism. Such challenges are no reason to give reporters a pass for neglecting to ask hard questions and unearth the story behind the story. The role of the newsman has always been hard, but that is what makes it indispensable to democratic governance.

“We are not there to be their PR agents. We are there to do our job,” Alexander said about the tendency for reporters to content themselves with statements from government spokespersons.

“The internet is a fire hose of information – there is so much out there. But how much is reliable and accurate?” asks Watchdog.org radio host Ben Yount.

The question is a daunting one for news consumers. The Internet age has brought us unprecedented access to information, but so much of that information comes to us helter–skelter and void of context. Often it leaves us wondering: how does one go about separating the wheat from the chaff?

To address this challenge, the journalism team at Watchdog.org has launched a regular news podcast aimed at taking our audience behind the headlines and explaining the context of the stories that matter to them. You can subscribe to it on iTunes and Stitcher.

“That’s what podcasts can do so much better than text stories or Twitter updates,” said Yount. “We can explain, go in depth, ask questions out loud. The tone, tempo, and tenor of the podcast clearly communicates the headline and perspective much more clearly than even the best written word.”

As the news media world grows more fragmented, readers are free to find their own news sources. They no longer need to wait for the evening news, and as a result, news organizations have an opportunity to provide them with something deeper and more engaging than a one- or two-minute package.

“A new consumer does not want to be talked to or talked at, they want to be included in the conversations,” said Yount. “That’s where podcasts come in. Well-done podcasts can supplement a traditional story.”

Our podcasts function as a supplement, explains reporter and frequent Watchdog.org Podcast host Eric Boehm, because we frequently have our own reporters on as guests. This lets them share additional juicy details from their stories and provide more context about the subjects they cover. In addition to reporters, the podcast sometimes brings public policy experts or public officials on as guests so they can offer their own unique insights.

The Watchdog.org Podcast is sorted into six different series, depending on the issue up for discussion.

“Sit Down, Shut Up” looks at education issues at the national, state and local levels. In these episodes, hosts Ben Yount and Bre Payton have talked about concerns like the exploding costs of higher education in the U.S. and the humorous (but sad) inability of Philadelphia’s school system to provide adequate toilet paper.

“Breaking the Piggy Bank” breaks down the national public pension crisis by looking at local manifestations of pension abuse and unsustainability. In this series, hosts Eric Boehm and Steve Greenhut have talked about what California is doing to secure pension payments from the bankrupt city Stockton, and they’ve exposed a nifty trick discovered by public sector employees that allows them to sometimes double or even triple their annual pension payouts.

The “Code Blue” Podcast provides a weekly look at heath issues, ranging from the latest public health debates to small government views on health care reform. Topics addressed by reporters Katie Watson and Jason Hart include the cultural debate over vaccination and the problematic math of Medicaid expansion.

In “Say it Loud, Say it Proud,” host Matt Kittle talks free speech and First Amendment issues – rights that are some of the most important to our society, but also some of the most frequently under attack. Most significantly, Kittle has talked about the plight of a Marquette University professor who was fired for comments he wrote on a private blog.

As its title suggests, Watchdog.org’s “Behind the Headlines” podcast aims to take a deeper look at the state-level political news being uncovered by our reporters. In this weekly installment, host Eric Boehm has looked at the consequences of the FCC’s embrace of “net neutrality,” and unpacked the true cost to workers of being part of a labor union.

“In Our Backyards” looks at why local government – city councils, school boards and even water treatment authorities – is so important to keep an eye on. It turns out your tax dollars can be wasted by local officials just as easily as they can be wasted by member of Congress.

Through these series, Boehm said, “listeners will get a solid, free-market perspective on the news of the day and will hear from the people who are on the ground in the states and statehouses around the country.”

“We hope the podcasts will add to the value that people are already getting from reading Watchdog.org,” said Boehm, “and in a format that allows them to easily download and listen at any time and in any place.”

Click here to subscribe to the Watchdog.org Podcast on iTunes or Stitcher!

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” – Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States

This quote from Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of our nation, shows that he truly appreciated the value of journalism in maintaining a free society. In fact, it appears he valued it higher than government itself.

Role of Journalism in Democracy

It is our belief that the role of journalism in a democracy is to:

report on those in power through what we call watchdog journalism;

report on the public’s needs, impressions, and wants;

provide reassurance and even panic prevention by shedding light on critical events.

The Pew Research Journalism Project provides a nice summation of both the purpose and the current challenges in an article titled A New Journalism for Democracy in a New Age. We love its conclusion: “Freedom and democracy depend upon individuals who refuse to give up their belief that the free flow of timely, truthful information is what has made freedom, self-government and human dignity possible.”

Gatekeepers vs. Referees

The 2005 article also has an important point to make about journalists becoming “referees rather than gatekeepers” for information. They note that the fences are already down with many, many other sources of information available. They were quite prescient in that now, some nine years later, there are substantially more sources of information available to anyone with a smartphone.

From another perspective, one need only look at the challenges of journalists in nations where democracy is either in its infancy or does not exist at all. In those nations—from Cuba to Russia and extending across continents—journalists face the very real threat of death for reporting what those in government do not want reported.

The World Movement for Democracy provides a short summary of the broad range of issues affecting journalists in a post titled “The Role of Journalists in Democratic Development.” This list includes a huge array of issues that we largely take for granted in the United States, from intimidation and violence to bribery and just trying to eke out a living from very low pay.

Objective Reporting or Advocacy Journalism

“Journalists believe that objective journalism provides facts and information to citizens who can then make their own judgment.” This is from Michael Schudson, professor of journalism at Columbia University, in his article titled “Reluctant Stewards: Journalism in a Democratic Society” in the Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Schudson further states that this mindset has often morphed into advocacy journalism, where reporters attempt to demonstrate that they “know best” regarding what you should think and act upon. He then tracks the development of traditional journalism, which he estimates is only about a century old. Schudson’s final key conclusion is that “Pluralism, pragmatism, and decentralized invention may do better at stewarding democracy than a coherent philosophy of moral guardianship ever could.” He further states that “fact-based accountability news is the essential food supply of democracy.”

Citizen Watchdog Journalism

In our viewpoint he is really pointing to the decentralized and pragmatic emergence of citizen watchdog journalism. This movement has been growing, due in part to the Internet’s ability to get the news out and do so in an extremely cost effective and rapid manner. It has also been growing because there are important areas that mainstream news outlets can no longer cover or where they have reduced their coverage. This includes our own statehouse reporting.

This does place into perspective what so many of us have come to believe is the normal of traditional journalism: newspaper, television, and even radio. We need to be reminded that the golden age of radio lasted about three decades. What we call newspaper journalism has been in place roughly a century and began its decline a couple of decades ago. Television continues strong in viewership, but its news reporting has substantially declined.

We also forget that Thomas Paine and his pamphleteering helped lead the way to the Revolutionary War. At the time his approach to getting the word out was pretty revolutionary, so to speak. Much of this type of revolutionary reporting is happening today. It is happening through citizen journalists, watchdog groups like our own, and even social media—think of the photo of the plane landing in the Hudson River that was first posted on Twitter.

You Can Help

Citizen journalism begins with you, the citizen. It can be as simple as your choices regarding news sources. Advertisers and funding will move with the readers.

If you see this growing threat to “fact-based accountability news” which is “the essential food supply of democracy” as the serious matter we believe it is, now is the time to step forward and make a difference.

In the heat of the 2014 midterm election campaigns last September, Politico ran a story examining a new strategy among national environmental groups, such as liberal billionaire Tom Steyer’s super PAC NextGen Climate.

“Seeing no end to gridlock in Congress,” the story read, “national environmental groups are trying a new strategy for winning battles on climate change and green power: pouring record amounts of money into legislative races in a handful of states.”

The story went on to detail how these groups were making a multi-million-dollar push in races for the state legislature in places like Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, where flipping just a few seats could change the balance of power in the statehouse.

A month later, however, election results would prove their effort largely wasted, as Steyer-backed campaigns turned into a long list of losses. But since then, environmentalist groups have since shown no signs of pulling back from their agenda at the state and local level.

Just as Watchdog.org was on the ground during election season asking hard questions about alternative energy and environmentalist agendas, our reporters have kept up their scrutiny as statehouses around the country convene for a new term. Here are just a few issue areas where Watchdog.org is providing a counter-narrative to the environmentalist rhetoric of these groups.

The coal smokescreen

“Everyone wants as clean an environment as possible,” said Rob Nikolewski, National Energy Correspondent for Watchdog.org, “but one thing you quickly learn about energy is that in order to generate power there has to be a cost. Nothing is generated without it.”

Last year, for example, when the EPA announced its Clean Power Plan, an ambitious new proposal to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 30% by 2030 as part of President Obama’s climate-change agenda, Watchdog.org reporters were some of the first to look at the local- and state-level costs of complying with the plan in places like Missouri, Wisconsin, and Mississippi.

“EPA regulations come at a cost — and some states have to pay more than others,” Nikolewski noted. “It’s a big part of Watchdog’s job to get government officials to spell out how much these regulations will cost and let readers decided if those costs equal the supposed benefits.”

The flurry of media scrutiny over the Clean Power Plan has largely subsided, but our reporters have continued to investigate coal energy issues. In Wisconsin, Adam Tobias recently covered a new report that found the state would lose thousands of manufacturing jobs over the next several years if forced to comply with the EPA’s plan. Similarly, Vermont Watchdog reporter Bruce Parker noted that Vermont would see a 3.4 percent dent in manufacturing jobs, according to the report.

Furthermore, as Kenric Ward has reported, not all states are taking the crushing new regulations lying down. Several bills in the Virginia Senate would provide a last line of defense against tougher EPA rules by protecting customers from likely rate hikes and allowing the General Assembly to sue the EPA using State Attorney General funds.

Wind energy in the doldrums

When it comes to wind energy, Nikolewski said that “too much reporting simply parrots the talking points of its supporters and glides over inconvenient facts — such as the high cost of offshore wind farms and the number of birds that are killed.” Last year, for example, he covered the backlash that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suffered after enacting a 2013 rule exempting wind farms from prosecution for the unintentional deaths of bald and golden eagles. And in Watchdog.org’s Minnesota bureau, reporter Tom Steward has written a number of similar stories over the past year on the devastating toll wind turbines take on local wildlife.

As Steward has reported in other stories, concerns over wind energy are not limited to the endangered animals they may harm. They have also been the subject of costly tax breaks, such as when Minnesota recently waived $625,000 in taxes for a wind turbine manufacturer. And it gets worse at the federal level. At the end of last year, Kenric Ward reported that Congress voted for another $10 billion in renewable energy credits. Skewed heavily toward wind and solar, those credits help sustain industries that would have a hard time existing without help from taxpayers.

“Just about everyone touts the growth of the renewable energy industry,” said Nikolewski, “but it remains to be seen. . . whether renewables like solar and wind have the energy density to make really significant contributions, especially if they can ever stand on their own without government subsidies.”

Stories like that of the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts, for example, which was intended to provide electricity to the area at a cost of $2.5 billion but then lost financing from its two biggest customers, raise hard questions about the future offshore wind projects in the U.S.

Fracking isn’t a dirty word

“A lot of reporters repeat assertions by fracking opponents about dangerous incidents,” said Nikolewski, “but few report that there have been no confirmed cases of groundwater contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing.”

For his part, Nikolewski says he tries to be specific and clear on this issue, and to keep in mind an important piece of context: the capability for fracking has been around for decades. Even though it has only started making frequent headlines in the past few years, the technology has improved markedly over the years. These improvements, however, have apparently not been enough to stop states like New York and Maryland from restricting fracking, as Watchdog.org has reported.

One of Nikolewski’s most important stories since starting on the energy beat focuses on a fracking ban that was later tossed out of federal court. His investigation revealed how a small county in New Mexico may have been taken for a ride as a test case when it was encouraged by a Pennsylvania-based environmental group to pass the ban. Now that the ban has been invalidated, the county – one of the poorest in the Southwest – may be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Context, costs and critical thinking

Energy is at the heart of modern society because it is a fundamental part of almost everything we do. As such, it makes sense that energy topics show up often in debates not only at the federal level but in statehouses and city councils all over the country. Informed debates that lead to effective policy, however, are only possible with accurate facts and honest analyses of our energy sources.

Because so many people are emotionally invested in seeing green-energy causes advanced, Nikolewski worries that reports that put the environmental movement in a negative light can be given short shrift or ignored altogether. Unfortunately, this attitude can bleed into media coverage.

“Reporters are skeptical by nature,” said Nikolewski, “but too many times reporters on energy beats across the country come across as cheerleaders, especially when it comes to green energy.”

“There needs to be more critical thinking when it comes to energy reporting and I think that’s what Watchdog.org provides.”

What news organizations first come to mind as the protectors of fundamental freedoms — 1st and 4th Amendment rights like speech, assembly, religion, privacy — against brazen government overreach and abuse of the little guy?

Did you answer The New York Times, The Washington Post, or maybe even an established TV news station?

If so, you’ll have problems with this next question: What 2013 scandal was one of the most egregious cases of governmental trampling of 1st Amendment-protected rights in recent years?

If you only rely on legacy news for your news, you’re not likely to know the answer: The IRS’ obstruction of hundreds of Tea Party applications for nonprofit status — an abuse that first came to light in May 2013 when the then-director of the IRS office in charge of these applications publicly apologized for the practice.

But you aren’t really at fault, not if you’re a legacy news-only reader.

When it came to reporting one of the most horrendous cases of government overreach and abuse in recent years, legacy news organizations looked the other way. Worse, they bought into the government’s excuses for such harassment – hook, line, and sinker.

An Egregious Case of Government Bullying

Here’s the background: In March 2010, as the run-up to that year’s midterm elections, the Obama administration began using the IRS to block Tea Party applications, and others from mostly conservative and religious groups, for tax-exempt nonprofit status by subjecting them to intense scrutiny and compliance demands. For example, the Ohio-based American Patriots for Against Government Excess, already halfway through the application process, was ordered in 2012 to provide all records of its social media activity, its membership and by-laws, and its interactions with politicians, among other things, in 60 days or have its application closed. Likewise, a Honolulu group told Watchdog.org of detailed IRS demands for photos, videos, names of attendees and speakers at public rallies, and copies and recordings of speeches at those events.

In contrast, in February 2010, the Champaign, IL Tea Party’s tax-exempt status request sailed through IRS offices in 90 days without a single question.

Investigators later found an August 2010 memo from Lois Lerner, head of the IRS applications office, instructing staff to target nonprofit requests containing “Tea Party,” “patriot” or “9/12″ — a reference to Glenn Beck’s group — and like phrases.

Lerner, coincidentally, initially blamed the scandal on the independent actions of a few low-level “line people in Cincinnati,” and Obama later insisted liberal groups were targeted, too.

The IRS vs. Tea Party Scorecard: Legacy vs. New Media

Sure, legacy news organizations covered the IRS scandal. But how outraged were these news outlets, really?

Here’s a hint: the Columbia Journalism Review — hardly a Tea Party proponent — lumped legacy coverage into an August 2013 article partly titled, “How the media lost interest in IRS targeting, even as new facts emerged.”

In May 2013, when the scandal broke, two leading legacy papers reacted this way:

The New York Times published 8 articles, including 5 on Page 1

The Washington Post published 16 articles, including 8 on Page 1

Legacy coverage then plummeted in June, when the White House categorically denied any connection to the IRS’ singling out of Tea Party applications, and insisted liberal applications also were subject to IRS scrutiny. How badly did legacy coverage decline? The Times has published a total of five articles since May 2013 on the scandal, three of which are commentaries, including guest editorials.

The Big Three news channels haven’t done much better:

ABC, NBC and CBS news produced 136 broadcasts in the first seven weeks of the scandal, but only 14 more in 10 months that followed, according to NewsBusters.

The real outrage came from across new media — from the online news outlets that recognized the IRS’ manhandling of Tea Party applications as a targeted and eminently dangerous affront to constitutionally protected rights. And they went after the scandal with the saturation coverage that it, and the news reading public, deserved. Consider these numbers, from online-only news groups:

Townhall.com posted 41 articles in May 2013, and 1,890 articles to date

Real Clear Politics, 39 articles; 2,910 articles to date

And the list continues. Breitbart.com has posted 1,910 articles to date and the American Thinker, 921. Red State.com didn’t offer an aggregate number of its articles on a search, but has 39 pages to scroll through, and Watchdog.org, the news arm of the Franklin Center, has well over two-dozen pages.

Online, Government Isn’t Being Ignored

These reporters didn’t accept at face value the government’s claims that no one was targeted on the basis of their political or religious beliefs. Rather, they pursued those claims and grilled government officials, to detail facts that proved otherwise. As Vox and RealClearPolitics, among others, noted, a full 83 percent, or 248 of the 298 applications “flagged” between early 2010 and May 2012, were filed by conservative groups — as were 100 percent of those subject to audits — compared with 9% of liberal groups. The IRS crackdown snared a few liberal outfits, sure, but almost by accident, said Reason.com, much “the way tuna nets catch an occasional dolphin.”

Online, investigations are continuing into government harassment and bullying, from wide new media coverage of the ACLJ lawsuit filed on behalf 41 Tea Party and conservative groups from 22 states, to Watchdog.org’s extensive series of questionable “John Doe” investigations by prosecutors into former aides and associates of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin (see “Wisconsin’s Secret War“).

Online, the abuse that results from the misuse of power is being debated and challenged — because online, new media reporters aren’t “losing interest” in the government’s use of tax power to suppress free speech, political or religious affiliation, and public assembly.

So, before the next quiz, you might want to check for news where it’s most widely and usefully being reported — online.

“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.” – James Madison, fourth President of the United States and author of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech and of the press.

The rise of search engines have given us the ability to advance and diffuse knowledge more rapidly than ever before. After all, we all use the Internet to find a definition or to learn more about issues and stay up to date on current events.

Andreessen further pointed out that the first two factors drive prices down while the third factor greatly increases volume. Given these factors, he feels that the opportunity for the overall news business is huge.

His next insight offers an intriguing business perspective. Andreessen notes the relatively small amount of money that is at play in the news business relative to other industries. He feels it is a simple problem to resolve, suggesting that a big opportunity exists to fund investigative reporting via philanthropy and even crowdsourcing. Andreessen goes on to note that despite $300 billion in philanthropic activity in the United States, the news industry does not tap into nearly enough of this funding source.

Andreessen concludes by discussing business models and suggests that the wall between content and advertising must be torn down. We can hear the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments from the old-line journalism crowd. Yet from a true business perspective it all needs to be about delivering value to your audience.

Search engines get this difference and are delivering that value to their reader, or what we call “viewers.” When a viewer goes online to search for a topic or news item, they also get served links—or information—to make associated purchases. Search engines deliver more value to their viewers.

Death of News

Well, if Andreessen is optimistic about the news industry, Robert G. Kaiser is not. In his recent article “The Bad News About the News” published by the Brookings Institution (a non-profit public policy organization based in Washington, DC), this retired editor of the Washington Post cites a litany of woes and notes a key recipient of the benefits of this change—search engines.

Kaiser states that advertising revenue of all United States’ newspapers in 2000 was $63.5 billion, and by 2013 had plummeted to $23 billion. On the other hand, the most popular search engine’s advertising revenue has moved from $70 million in 2001 to $50.6 billion in 2013.

Newspaper advertising works on the broadcast principle of shipping everything to the broadest audience. On the other hand, search engines and other digital properties can target ads to people who are seeking a particular item. Advertisers get to optimize their investment through different types of behavioral targeting that can really make an impact on sales. In this way, search engines deliver greater value to their advertisers.

Kaiser offers further insight about newspapers and their advertisers who have yet to fully embrace digital marketing. He points out that Americans spend about 5% of their media time with magazines and newspapers, yet nearly 20% of advertising dollars still go to print media. Kaiser goes on to project that when these advertisers start awakening to the advantages of digital marketing, the shift of advertising dollars will be even greater.

Kaiser also reports that the number of journalists at United States’ newspapers has moved from 59,000 in 1989 to 36,000 in 2012. That has to hurt from the perspective of someone who has built his career at the top of that industry. You can understand still more of this downside at Newspaper Death Watch or by reviewing the Wikipedia list of defunct newspapers.

Creative Destruction

It all adds up to yet another example of Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction.” Schumpeter’s concept builds on the original work of Karl Marx, stating that capitalism must destroy and reconfigure previous economic orders to clear the way for the creation of new wealth. Here we are seeing the old economic model of newspaper and television broadcasting up against the Internet’s ability to “narrow-cast” information to smaller and smaller groups.

As the stories above demonstrate, those small groups, or even single individuals, have interest in specific news about their industry segment and/or communities but also expect to be served options on how to respond. Advertisers who are savvy enough to know who to target, what channel to use to reach them, and even the subjects of interest to those they are trying to reach, can readily fill this void. Search engines have built the delivery systems for advertisers and online news outlets that are fully engaged in “creative destruction.”

Franklin Center’s Role in the New Media Landscape

We will admit that we are right in the heart of the “creative destruction” of the traditional media order. Yet we began this journey–and continue to this day–defending the critical need for investigative reporting at every level of government. We are particularly focused on statehouse reporting, as that is where traditional media have retreated the farthest and, therefore, where the need is greatest.

Can search engines come to the rescue of journalism? Certainly the model of online narrow-casting and delivering value to the viewer is front and center for content delivery. Yet, we would argue that the need for sound investigative reporting, watchdog reporting, if you will, remains somewhat outside the mainstream of the economic factors at play in the creation of this new order. That is why we are a non-profit, generating funding from like-minded individuals and organizations to drive serious investigative reporting at every level.

You can learn more about how the Franklin Center is working in this new world of online journalism here. You can also find our top local stories that have been picked up by national media here.

School choice is more than just an academic subject. School choice–the right of parents to choose the best education options for their children–is an issue that touches the lives of families across America.

This past weekend, 40 bloggers from across the country gathered in the nation’s capital to see that firsthand at the Franklin Center’s AmplifySchoolChoice conference.

On the first day of the conference, attendees visited two schools in the DC area.

First, bloggers visited Archbishop Carroll High School, a Catholic school that serves many underprivileged students. Some of the school’s top students gave tours of the school, allowing conference goers the chance to see students and teachers hard at work. Later on, a panel of students answered questions. One student explained that he travels more than an hour to get to school each day.

Many students at Carroll are able to attend the school thanks to the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. Originally signed into law and later defunded by President Obama, the program was reauthorized by Congress in 2011.

Bloggers next visited the middle school campus of Achievement Prep, a top-rated charter school in Southeast DC, serving students in grades 4-8. Achievement Prep scholars–as they refer to their students–are nearly twice as likely to be proficient in math and reading than other students in the District of Columbia.

The goal of Achievement Prep is to prepare its scholars for high school and beyond, which they achieve by creating an environment that fosters a love of learning. Susan Cannon, the school’s Chief Academic Officer, told the bloggers about a parent who said her child used to not know what he was doing next weekend, but now he’s talking about where he wants to go to college. That kind of change is common with Achievement Prep scholars.

Throughout the rest of the conference, the bloggers heard from experts in the field of school choice.

On day one, Moriah Costa of Watchdog.org and Andrew Clark of IJReview discussed their ideas for reporting effectively on school choice. Additionally, Dick Komer of the Institute for Justice gave his take on school choice as one of the leading litigators of the school choice movement. Bloggers tweeted his remarks as part of an interactive “tweet-up” using the hashtag #AmplifyChoice.

U.S. Senator Tim Scott surprised the bloggers by joining the conference via Skype to explain to the audience why he supports school choice.

Later on, Robert Pondiscio of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute discussed the importance of curriculum, Gina Mahony of the National Alliance for Public Charters explained the importance of charter schools, and in one of the highlights of the conference, Robert Enlow, President and CEO of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, gave his take on the issue and interviewed a parent and student of Archbishop Carroll High School.

The mother and daughter discussed how the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program and other forms of school choice have made a major difference for their family.

On day two of the conference, bloggers learned about bipartisan outreach from Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform and Virginia Walden Ford of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Later they got tips on marketing school choice from Greg Reed of the Institute for Justice, Matt Frendewey of the American Federation for Children, and Tanzi West of the Black Alliance for Educational Options.

Next Ben Scafidi of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice explained the economics of school choice. His research shows that school choice programs can actually save the government money, contrary to the refrain from school choice opponents.

In every state that has a private choice program, the average scholarships are far less than state spending per student #AmplifyChoice

To close out the conference, Don Soifer and Naomi DeVeaux of DC Public Charter School Board discussed their role in bringing greater choice to DC-area parents. As an independent authorizer, they can approve charter schools without much interference from the government. In many jurisdictions, the local school board holds the power and refuses to approve charter schools.

By the end of the conference, the bloggers were motivated to amplify School Choice: by blogging, tweeting, and more.

School choice certainly affects students and their parents, but it affects us all. What will you do to Amplify School Choice?

For more on school choice and to read the work of bloggers who attended the conference, check out AmplifySchoolChoice.com, a project of the Franklin Center.

Net neutrality is arguably one of the most important, yet least understood, tech policy issues of the day. Often intimidated by the technical jargon, any attention mainstream pundits might give to the issue is but brief and shallow, leaving the debate to be fought in policy corners like ideologically-slanted niche tech blogs and Washington, D.C. luncheons sponsored by special interests.

Net Neutrality, however, has serious implications for domestic and international economies – and for civil liberties. The U.S. economy is already tightly integrated into the Internet, and any debate about the future of the American economy without serious consideration about the future of the Internet is incomplete and laughable.

This white paper attempts to distill the debate for the layperson, i.e., someone without the policy or technical background.

Few choices that parents make about their children are as important as where they will be educated.

Important, that is, if they are actually permitted to choose.

Looking at the polling data, school choice programs should be sweeping the nation. Simply put, school choice is the idea that children and parents should be able to choose from a variety of educational options rather than being forced into a publicly mandated school. Time and again, they have proven effective at improving students’ test scores and graduation rates. And recent polls have found strong bipartisan support for this idea, with 69 percent of Americans saying that parents should have the right to use education tax dollars to send their child to the public or private school that best serves their needs. Yet in reality, school choice programs are still relatively rare across the country, despite their popularity.

This week is National School Choice Week, when groups and organizations from all over the country work together to “shine a positive spotlight on the need for effective education options for all children.”

To amplify this conversation about the power of school choice to transform both the lives of children and the communities in which they live, the Franklin Center’s professional journalism division, Watchdog.org, has devoted more reporters to the education beat than any other subject over the past year. This is unique among almost all other media organizations. Our five-person team of education reporters is seizing the school choice narrative all over the country – from our nation’s capital to the suburbs and inner cities.

In doing so, they help fulfill a critical part the Franklin Center’s mission to keep government accountable to the people and act as a watchdog for taxpayers. Local government is often the “laboratory of democracy” where new education policies are road-tested – and either succeed or fail. On the micro level, it is important for reporters to cover new policies and schools because taxpayers in those communities deserve to know whether the money devoted to education is well-spent. And on the macro level, these stories deserve national attention because they can provide a template for education reform for other cities and states across America.

What does this look like in action? Our coverage of school choice issues tends to focus on two basic narratives, highlighting how school choice programs are giving poor children or those with special needs a quality education that they would not have otherwise received, or looking at communities where school choice does not exist and seeing the great lengths to which families will go to try to give their children a better future.

This may mean shining a light on low-income students in Washington, D.C. who have been denied scholarships through the Opportunity Scholarship Program.

Perhaps it means telling the story of Paul Davis, a single father in St. Louis who works part time as a taxi driver to supplement his Social Security income. Davis’ son has mild to moderate autism and was often bullied at Normandy Middle School. He had no other option, until the school lost its accreditation and a state law allowed Davis to transfer his son to new school in one of the highest performing districts in the state, where his experience has been much better.

Or on a more positive note, covering school choice may look like this story about the success of Hope Christian School in Milwaukee, which recently opened a new campus. The new campus has grown from just 47 K-4 students when it opened in 2002 to a current student body of 580. The school has posted huge successes, such as a 100 percent college acceptance rate for its seniors over the past two years.

These are just a few of the scores of stories told by Watchdog.org’s education reporters over the past year. Together they are shaping the narrative of the state of education in America, showing readers how school choice could be the key to a better future for the next generation.